Soviet Log 45
Smash Talk & Grab Episode 45 found the Girls recuperating from the morning's rooftop activities at the Secret Soviet Loyalist Underground Base of Raphael Ignonno, Giacomo's mentor. Rocquette and Katya repaired to an antechamber along with Lillyanna and Marina'','' Katya subtly interrogating Marina over the 4 hours it took her to Cure Ailments Kat's Grievous Wound and while Roc performed some level 9 Medical Doctoring on herself. Mei busied herself with her trinkets as usual. Liselotte and Eva secluded themselves for some 'rest time'. After Lisolette dosed off, Eva set to work nano engineering while keeping an eye on the comings and goings in the courtyard with Boris. When the next Block rolled around it was time for the meeting with Ignonno and the other main members of the Loyalist Brigade, including Pavel Buganin, and Alexandra Malenkov''.'' In the course of the briefing Raphael explained that his superior Occult Knowledge had revealed to him that the Nazis / and/or Nazi Sympathizers had somehow managed to lock-down the Lay-Line Nexus at the Basilica just outside of the Kremlin where we needed to do the Elder Sign Ritual to expel their influence. In order to 'unlock' it we would apparently need to first do Rituals at three other churches, all located at Ley-Line confluences inside the Kremlin! At four hours for each Ritual, we decided the only way to pull it off was going to be to put together 3 groups and perform all 3 Rituals simultaneously. Raphael offered that the Rebels could field one Squad, the PCs figured we would count as another, but hat still left us under-(wo)manned. Someone, (Katya?), suggested that the American Hot Shots were the girls for the Job. We agreed to look into maybe looking into trying contact them at some point in the future, then broke off for some quality 4 Hour Block time. Eva, realizing that Lisolette had been under a lot of stress lately, (particularly due to Katya's constant yammering and giggling while trying to perform extremely exacting forgery work. What else could it be? It's not like Eva regularly leaves her alone for hours at a time with the notoriously self involved,home wrecker), organised a makeshift spa, including a steambath, allowing the two of them to languish away for a sultan block. Katya & Giacomo took advantage of Katya's Sultan Snack store for some 'vigorous rest'. Giacomo proved to be surprisingly adept to Katyas delight. Rocquette and Mei-Lin worked on projects and schmoozed with the NPC's; Mei working on Raphael for Mystic Training in the Arch Spells we would need (her to have) for our infiltration of the Kremlin, and Roc making contact with Svetlanna Voroshilov, the most Swedish looking of the NPC Lasses. Roc burned a couple of Sultan-Snacks to sneak out to go dancing with Svetlanna, but despite tempting fate nothing untoward occurred. Since she was up anyway, Rocquette started in on 5 Blocks of Specialty 'Thug' Training, (and Kat followed suit with Specialty training of her own). Meanwhile Eva worked on her new 'totally not creepy' Fem-Bot Drone, and Mei was soon enjoying 16 hours of Raphael pounding Arch-Knowledge into her. It emerged during this extended interlude that Raphael was in fact the Legendary Rasputin! This may explain why he had reportedly had visions of our imminent arrival? We were briefly interrupted by reports from the Rebels that they had intercepted official communications about a group of female suspects detained at one of the Defensive Ring Checkpoints, (they had forgotten to stop looking for us!). Eva quickly deduced that they were the Hot Shots Marines and proposed taking immediate action to rescue our friends but, the rest of the party was too busy indulging in personal upgrading, and chose to leave them to wolves for the time being. While Kat, Mei, and Roq finished their personal business and caught up on sleep, Eva built IFF Badges for Brightmeer, Lilyana, and Cyta. First thing in the morning we leapt into action. Worried that we had already taken too long and didn't have time to forge new Documents we decided to just wing it with a generic NKVD Squad of Amazingly Hot Chicks Disguise. Someone, (Katya?) rolled a Natural 20 on the Disguise? We had a Rebel guide us out through the tunnels to another spot on the riverbank, then stole a nondescript black sedan and proceeded to the Checkpoint. As luck would have it, (or, getting by on our good looks as normal?), while we were still setting up our initial surveil of the station, who should should be led out but the very same Hot Shots that we had not yet gotten around to bothering to try and contact, (talk about moving at the speed of the plot!). They were the prisoners of an NKVD Officer who was herding them towards a much more authentic looking staff-car. Knowing that fortune favors the bold and riding hard on our luck, we screeched to a halt and piled out, demanding to know what he was doing. Launching into an epic 4 on 1 Group Beguile beat-down, we soon left him standing dazed by the curb wondering what had happened to his prisoners, and his car! We had dropped a few subtle(-ish) hints during our interactions with the Guard, but only one of the Hot Shots had seen through our awesome disguises, so the rest of them were pleasant surprised when we revealed ourselves. We had lots of time to get reacquainted while we determined just how well hidden the Rebel's secret entrances really were, but eventually a Loyalist Scout came and found us and helped us return to base. Katya held a little impromptu get-together with old friends and new to help everyone get to know each other. After that we set about planning our Kremlinfiltration. The plan we devised was to infiltrate the Kremlin as "Bastille Restoration Services" workers where we would split into three groups, (Giacomo and crew, Joltin' Josie's crew, and our crew). Raphael/Rasputin told us that he wouldn't be able to interfere directly so he declined to join us. We needed to perform the ritual at three churches which together formed a triangle of nexus power in the center of the Kremlin. Each crew would take a different church and conduct the appropriate ritual within. When that was complete we would congregate at St. Basil's and do the final ritual that would restore Babba Yagga's link to the motherland. We also determined that Hans was returning from Berlin tomorrow so we had a small window to infiltrate the Kremlin without him around if we acted fast. Based on prior experience, Katya knew that we needed to add ourselves to the appropriate 'lists' and then show the correct papers at the security gates. We split up into teams with some of us using Communications to social engineer our way onto the lists, (it helped that Katya knew who to talk to already from past infiltrations), and others using Forgery to draft the papers. Each group took care of their own needs with Katya and Lieselotte handling our crew. Katya did her best to keep the mood light even though she knew Eva and Lieselotte had been having problems. It all must have been too much for the poor Lieselotte causing her to fail an easy DF, requiring an extra block, meaning Katya would be sleep deprived the following day. Katya didnt really mind since she figured it was just Lieselotte's way of sneaking an extra block of 'forgery and giggles' with her 'no pressure' friend. The forgery montage soundtrack heard - perhaps loudest in Eva's mind - throughout the 12-hour marathon was this classic (by another 'party of hotties'). Also, Rocquette used Betty Belle as leverage for some truly shameful emotional manipulation of Sveltana to finally get laid, (a Natural 20 Beguile probably didn't hurt either). Go-Sultan Snacks! Rewards 11 Generic Points Roq - 4 Random, 1 Benny Katya - 1 Benny Eva - 1 Benny Category:Soviet